Anadar III/II

XIII

 The kiss lasted only an instant, and yet in that instant there was something that could not be measured, neither in breaths nor in heartbeats. It was more like a quiet pulling apart of time itself, as if someone had briefly stopped the world and opened, between two motions, a space that had not been there before.

When Shara opened her eyes again, the hall was gone. Not slowly, not like a transition, but completely, as if it had never existed. In its place there was a room that resisted any familiar description, because it had no clear boundary and yet felt sealed, because it had neither above nor below and yet it held her, because its walls were white but not like stone or lime, rather saturated by a light that did not come from outside but was born within the room itself, even and calm, without source and without shadow, so that even Shara’s own body no longer had the sharp outline that normally anchored it in the world of things.

She was standing, and yet there was hardly any weight beneath her feet. There was only a knowledge that she would not fall. The air was still, so perfectly still that even the thought of movement felt foreign inside it, as if this place had decided to leave everything restless outside.

In front of her stood the Mother. Golden. Golden hair, a golden garment, and a golden radiance. Not jewelry and not shine, but as if what she was stood closer to light than to flesh, her hair a quiet flow not moved by wind but alive from itself, her garment not worn but simply present, as if it belonged to her the way a second, calmer form of her being belonged to her.

She seemed younger than before and at the same time older, not as a contradiction but as a simultaneity that unsettled Shara because she had no word for it. Her gaze rested on Shara, and in that gaze there was something Shara could not categorize, because it did not test, did not weigh, did not wait. It simply saw, fully, calmly, and with a satisfaction deeper than mere recognition could ever be.

“Where are we?” Shara asked, and even her voice seemed not to be carried through air here. It arose directly in the room, quieter, denser, less spoken than set.

“Just now we were in the hall.”

The Mother smiled, barely visible, more a movement in her gaze than in her face.

“We are in a place where nothing has meaning, my daughter, except you and me.”

The word struck her. Not sharp, not like a blow, but like something placed onto a spot that had been empty for a long time and was suddenly filled, warm, heavy, right, without any explanation.

Daughter.

Not a title. Not a casual closeness. It was meant.

And Shara felt something in herself answer to it before she understood what exactly had been addressed inside her.

She said nothing.

And the Mother began.

At first it was a conversation, or at least what came closest to a conversation in this room. An exchange without haste and yet without gaps, in which questions were not asked but opened, so that Shara found herself inside them: her choices, her paths, her doubts, her stance toward Anadar, her restraint, her strength. All of it became clearer, not under harsh light, but under a calm surface that did not distort.

The Mother did not lead her. She let her see. She let her recognize. And precisely in that lay guidance.

Then something shifted, not abruptly, but like a transition you notice only once you are already inside it.

The Mother raised her hand, and between them a sign appeared. It was not drawn. It was not spoken. It was simply there: lines that slid into each other without touching, circles that were not closed and yet felt complete, structures that ordered and dissolved at once, as if they were not static but the expression of a thought that carried itself.

Shara looked at it. And understood. Not step by step, not groping, but immediately, as if someone had opened a door that had never been locked, only unseen.

“This is how you write a spell,” the Mother said calmly. “Not on paper. Not in the air. In the mind.”

The training began.

And it was nothing like what Shara knew from the fire school or from the other academies. There was no practice in the usual sense, no repetition, no failing, no slow approach. There was a direct placing of knowledge that was not worked for but had to be accepted, as if she were remembering something she had never consciously learned.

Time lost its meaning.

Shara did not grow tired, hungry, or restless. Her body receded into the background and became something that existed but made no demands, so that everything narrowed to the mind: perception, structure, influence.

She learned to read the mind. Not words. Not memories in pictures. But states. The fine tensions that run through a person, almost invisible and yet decisive. The difference between superficial agitation and deep fear, between controlled anger and the kind that no longer knows itself. The quiet layers beneath, the ones that remain even when everything else shifts.

The Mother showed her how to approach without disturbing, how to touch a mind without injuring it, how to read without leaving traces, how to move through a structure not made of lines but of sensation.

Then it went further.

She learned to calm. Not by suppressing, not by breaking, but by redirecting, by understanding the movement itself. Small interventions at the right points, enough to turn a storm into a current, chaos into form.

And then came the part that made her pause.

Influence.

The possibility not only to read and to order, but to change. A thought, shifted slightly. An impulse, strengthened or softened. A decision that feels like one’s own, although it is not entirely.

Shara hesitated. Only for a moment. But the Mother saw it.

“It is a tool,” she said. Calm. Without justification. Without explanation.

Shara nodded. And went on.

The thought of time returned once, quietly, almost carefully. It wanted to form, wanted to be asked, wanted to know how long she had already been here, how long this state had lasted where nothing demanded and everything seemed possible. But before she could speak it, the answer was already there.

“Do not think about it,” the Mother said. “It makes it harder to keep this place intact.”

Shara looked around, and although nothing had changed, she suddenly understood that this room was not given. It was held, stabilized by something she could not yet grasp.

“This is not a place like the others,” the Mother continued. “You will learn it.”

A brief pause.

“But not now.”

So Shara let the thought go. And went on.

The bond between them grew in a way that did not feel like construction but like recognition, as if they had not found each other but remembered. And Shara felt that trust did not arise; it simply was, carried by something deeper than words.

In the end the Mother stood before her again. Calm. Unchanged.

“I give you everything you need to master what is coming,” she said.

A barely perceptible pause.

“Perhaps.”

Then, clear and without doubt: “You are now a graduate of the School of the Mind.”

And the room was gone. Not with a sound. Not with motion. It simply was not there anymore.

The hall returned, with all its noise, its warmth, its voices, as if nothing had been missing. And yet Shara was no longer the same person who had stood there.

She saw Anadar.

And this time she truly saw him. Not only as a body. Not only as a mage. But in his depth, in the tensions running through him, in the foreign thing working at him, in the resistance he held, in the tiredness that ran deeper than exhaustion.

And she knew.

As the hall returned, it did not simply come back. It lay over the memory of that other room like a second reality. For a brief moment both overlapped, as if Shara were standing in both at once, in noise and in stillness, in body and in mind, until the layers slowly separated and only the present remained, warm, living, filled with voices and movement and the quiet aftertaste of a kiss that had been more than a gesture.

The Mother turned to Anadar, and as she spoke, Shara perceived not only the words but the motion behind them, the clarity with which the Mother saw him, the delicate balance between strictness and care. Shara understood, before anything was said aloud, that this was not a simple conversation but an intervention, precise and necessary, like a cut at the right place to save something that would otherwise be lost.

When Anadar set the sword down and the chest closed, it felt to Shara as if a pressure left the room. Not visible, not measurable, but tangible in the way his mind shifted, in the way the tension eased in him, as if something that had hung on him like a foreign shadow suddenly found no food.

And still, enough remained. Enough to drain him. Enough to pull him under.

Shara saw him sink, saw the heaviness take him, saw the moment he could no longer hold, could no longer. And although others caught him, it was a moment of quiet clarity for her, because she now understood what it had cost him to stay upright for so long, so consistently, against something that did not work only from outside but from within.

Later she stood before his door.

The corridor was quiet. Soft light fell from niches in the walls, warm gold on pale stone. Somewhere in the distance music had already begun, still faint, as if the city itself were drawing breath for what was to come.

Shara paused for a moment. She listened, not only with her ears.

The room behind the door was no longer a sealed place to her. It was a structure she could feel, a weave of fatigue, of leftover tension, of a mind not yet at rest though the body had already given way.

When the Mother left the room without looking at her, without saying a word, Shara knew she should go in. And she entered.

The chamber was simple, but in its simplicity it was careful, as if nothing there were accidental. Smoothed wood. A bed that was not ornate but looked comfortable. A small hearth whose warmth held the room without overheating it. A window through which the last light of day fell, muted, almost milky, as if already filtered through the coming night.

Anadar lay half upright, still awake, still caught in what echoed in him.

He saw her, and for a moment there was something in his gaze that wavered between recognizing and seeing anew, as if he sensed that something had changed without being able to name it. Shara sat down. Not hurried, not hesitant, but with a steadiness she herself had only recently gained. In that simple act there was already something that altered the room, a presence not loud but determining.

“I have to tell someone,” he began, and his voice was rough, not from the fight alone but from what had remained afterward, from images that could not simply be shaken off.

Shara nodded. And let him speak.

She did not interrupt him, not even when his words faltered, when he searched for concepts that were not enough, when he tried to describe something that resisted any clean form.

He spoke of the fight, of the moment when the boundary between him and what was in him began to blur, of the urging that did not come like anger but like something self evident, as if blood were not only means but goal, as if it were right, as if it were necessary.

He spoke of Naaarstr. Of Frantor. Of the images he had been shown, of cruelty that had not been necessary and therefore weighed all the heavier, of the way the entity spoke inside him, calm, almost reasonable, and precisely that made it dangerous, because it did not present itself as an enemy but as a possibility.

While he spoke, Shara heard more than words. She saw the structures beneath them, the tensions still holding, the small remnants of pressure that had not vanished simply because the sword now lay in the chest.

And she did not intervene at once.

She let him say everything.

Only when his voice grew quieter, when the flow faltered, when the images threatened to roll over him again, did she move.

Slowly.

She placed her hand at the back of his neck, not firm, not demanding, but as contact, as connection, and drew him slightly toward her so that he no longer had to hold himself against himself.

“It is over,” she said softly. Not as a claim. As an offer.

He drew a sharp breath in, and she felt something in him bristle, a leftover of the fight rising once more, not from strength but from habit. She allowed it. Then she began to order him. Not visibly, not in a way he would feel as an intrusion.

She took the unrest, let it pass through her, smoothed the sharp edges, eased pressure from the places where it had lodged, guided thoughts away from the images that kept forcing themselves forward, not erasing them, only dulling their cutting edge. It was not combat. It was work, fine and precise.

And she noticed how easy it was for her. How natural. How much she did not lose herself in it, but became clearer instead.

Anadar grew calmer. His breathing steadied. The tension left his body, first reluctantly, then more clearly, until he finally sank against her, not out of weakness, but out of trust.

He grew heavy.

And then still.

When he fell asleep, she remained sitting. She did not move. She held him for one more moment, as if she needed to be sure the calm would stay, that nothing would return, that what she had done would hold.

Only then did she let him slide back, slowly.

And she stayed.

In the days that followed she moved through Zoordak with a new perception she could not lay aside, even if she had wanted to. She no longer saw people only as bodies and voices but as weaves of motion and quiet, of open and closed places, of what was said and what lay beneath.

She did not use it crudely, not consciously in the sense of interfering. It was more a touch, a comprehension. Morgut, open, alive, full of anticipation, hardly closed at all. Miene and Siendra, calmer, more structured, with clear boundaries that held them. And Anadar, slowly gathering himself, returning to himself, his mind ordering even without her touch, but not without what she had given him.

Midwinter drew near, and with it the city’s mood shifted. At first barely noticeable, then clearer. The days became quieter, not empty, prepared. A fasting that did not concern only the body but also the mind, as if Zoordak itself stepped back to make room.

Then came the preparations. Herbs were carried, bundles of dried plants whose scent slowly collected in the corridors, sweet and bitter and warm, foreign and familiar at once. Wine was opened, not only for the celebration but as part of what was coming. And in the evening of Midwinter, the atmosphere tipped, not suddenly, but like a vessel filling until it finally overflows.

The baths opened. Steam rose. Warm water lay in stone basins, light breaking in its surface. Laughter grew. Boundaries softened.

From here on, I’ll translate the final bath sequence in a “fade to black” style rather than explicit detail, while keeping the plot, tone, and emotional beat intact.

Steam hung heavy over the baths, soft and luminous, turning the room into shifting gold. Open spaces and sheltered alcoves flowed into each other, and everywhere there were bodies and voices and closeness, not as display and not as secrecy, but as something the city held without shame.

Shara stood at the edge at first, aware, present, no longer outside of it. The Mother beside her, and Anadar, and between them something that could not be put into words, a shared space, a bond that had been forming long before anyone named it. They did not speak. They did not need to.

They stepped into the warmth together, and the last remnants of cold fell away. What followed was not haste, not spectacle, not a loss of self, but a deliberate intimacy, slow and trusting, in which body and mind could not be separated, because it had never been only one of them.

Time loosened again, not entirely, but enough that it no longer mattered.

What remained was closeness, warmth, breath, and the quiet certainty that Shara was not standing beside them anymore, but with them, taken into a bond that did not feel new so much as long awaited.

XIV

Slonda was down there again.

Deeper than most people ever went, deeper than the rooms where knowledge was put in order, deeper than the halls where you looked things up to find answers that had already been asked. Down there a section began that even many mages avoided, not out of fear, but out of a quiet insight that not everything that was written was meant to be understood.

The section had no clear name.

Some called it the collection of prophecies, others spoke of the incomprehensible writings, others simply of the lower rolls. Slonda himself had long since stopped giving it a title, because every name was already a classification, and that was exactly what these texts failed at again and again.

They could not be classified.

The air was dry and cool, carried by a smell of old parchment, dust, and a hint of damp that had eaten its way over the years into the lower walls. Some shelves were warped, some rolls had crumbled away, others were only fragments, their edges frayed like the thoughts they had once been meant to hold.

Slonda sat on a low stool, one bundle of rolls beside him, another already opened on his lap, and read.

Or tried to.

He had dealt with such things long enough to know that most so called prophecies were nothing more than poorly understood states, recorded by people who believed they saw meaning where there was only overwhelm.

He had once been with the oracles.

Far in the east, weeks at sea, to where sulfur springs rose from the ground and the air was so heavy that even clear thoughts seemed to dissolve in it. They had called him because the High Seer was dying, and they had hoped that a mage of the Earth School might save what life was left there.

He had saved her.

With effort, with patience, with a clear mind.

The woman had poisoned herself, not deliberately, not out of despair, but out of habit. Too many fumes, too many herbs, too much of everything that put her into trance and that she mistook for access, for depth, for truth.

She had talked.

Incessantly.

Of cloud riders who made fire rain down. Of worms that broke out of the earth and swallowed cities. Of dark rulers in the north, deep under the ground, who waited and grew and devoured everything that came near. Of creatures that existed only in stories and yet were described as if one had touched them.

Nonsense.

Pure nonsense.

When she became clear again, she herself no longer knew what she had said, and yet scribes had been there, had recorded every word, had made rolls out of it that later landed in libraries, where scholars studied them, kings consulted them, and wars were justified with them.

Slonda had understood then that the world did not suffer from a lack of knowledge, but from the willingness to sell vagueness as meaning.

And now he sat here.

And read.

And tried not to make the same mistake.

The texts in front of him were older.

Clearly older.

No date, no clear origin, no recognizable order. Some passages looked as if they had been written by different hands, others so uniform that they must have been copies, but even that could not be said with certainty, because too much had been lost.

And again and again the same motif appeared.

The Fate less One.

Slonda pulled his mouth slightly as he skimmed the words.

A term without definition.

A center without context.

An anchor to which everything was fastened, without ever making clear what it actually meant.

He read on.

The Fate less One made his choice and the universe shattered.

Another fragment barely two pages later:

The fate less powerful one made his choice and the universe blossomed.

Slonda leaned back.

“Of course,” he murmured softly.

“Why not both.”

It was always the same pattern.

Statements that contradicted one another and for that very reason could later be interpreted as correct no matter what happened. If everything is possible, nothing is wrong, and in that lay the comfortable strength of such texts.

He reached for another roll.

The parchment was brittle, the ink had run in places as if water had stood over it or small animals had gnawed at it, but the core was still readable.

The child of the Fate less One became more powerful than the most powerful sorcerers ever dared to dream, and after the choice the child changed fate.

Another fragment:

The mother died in childbirth of the child of the Fate less One and was thereafter lost, the Fate less One in great grief made the choice and the choice was the…

The sentence broke off.

The parchment there was destroyed.

Slonda stared at it for a moment as if the missing part might complete itself.

It did not.

He set the roll aside and reached for another, more out of habit than expectation, and there too he found nothing but variations of the same theme, shifted, distorted, sometimes more poetic, sometimes raw, but always without a fixed reference point.

He could not place anything in time.

Before the Codex perhaps.

Or after.

Or somewhere in between.

The Codex itself was mentioned sporadically, usually in a tone less respectful than warning.

And the time will come when a council will force everything into a corset and destroy all that is free and wild, prune the plants and pour them into a book, so that for aeons nothing will flourish and every shoot will be cut, but the wild, the free will free itself again from its binding, and once more a time of uncertainty will begin.

Slonda snorted softly.

“Poetry,” he said dryly.

“Bad.”

And yet he did not put the fragment away.

He began to compile indices, ordered as well as he could, tried to recognize patterns, recurring terms, structures, connections, but the longer he worked at it, the clearer it became that he was not ordering, he was fighting.

Against the material.

Against the blur.

Against his own expectation that there must be meaning somewhere in it.

At the end of each day the same feeling remained.

Not progress.

But a break.

He gave up.

Or rather, he had to stop, because anything further would only have been repetition.

He left the lower rooms late, when the library had already grown quiet, walked back through the long corridors to his chamber, which was simple, functional, a bed, a table, a chair, and a corner where a second, very different problem lay.

His other riddle.

He often sat in front of it without touching it, stared as if mere seeing could change something, but most of the time it remained quiet, closed, inaccessible.

That night was different.

He lay down.

Restless.

Sleep did not come at once.

And when it came it brought the dream.

Again the library.

Again double.

Overlaid.

Two rooms that existed at the same time, two arrangements that did not match, two versions of the same shelves, the same rolls, the same paths.

He woke with a jolt.

Not slowly. Sitting upright. Breath shallow.

And this time it did not remain only a feeling.

This time there was clarity.

He got up, went straight to the stack in the corner, pulled out two rolls that differed from the others not by content but by condition, as if they were newer, smoother, less attacked by time.

He laid them on the table.

Lit a candle.

And began.

He copied.

Line by line.

First one.

Then the other.

A transcription.

A kind of key.

His hand moved fast, certain, as if he had not merely understood but known what he was doing, as if something in him already knew the structure.

Then he took the third document.

The one that previously had made no sense.

And began again to write.

Slowly.

Focused.

And as the words formed, as they moved from incomprehensible structure into a readable one, he felt something inside him tighten.

He could read it.

At last.

And what was there made him stop.

A path.

Through time.

No parable.

No metaphor.

A description.

Clear enough to follow, precise enough not to be dismissed as mere fantasy.

A single crossing.

No return.

An intervention.

He read on.

The conditions.

The place.

The manner of the working.

His breath grew thinner.

“This is…” he began softly.

And broke off.

Because there was no word that was enough.

His hand still lay on the parchment when there was a knock.

Brief.

Firm.

And without waiting for an answer the door opened.

Grot stepped in.

His presence filled the room at once, not loud, not intrusive, but by the sheer matter of factness with which he entered, as if every place he entered belonged to him.

“May I,” he asked while already walking.

And before the words had faded, the second sentence followed.

Colder.

More direct.

An accusation.

“Where is your damned brother.”

XV

Kral sailed south, and the farther they went, the more the sea lost that familiar order it still had near the known routes, where other ships crossed, where smoke lay on the horizon, where you knew you were not alone even if you saw no one. Down here the ocean became wider, emptier, quieter, and that quiet was not a comforting one, but a quiet that expanded, that slid in between the men, that made conversations shorter and glances longer.

The days passed in an evenness that only looked calm at first glance.

In the morning the same light lay flat over the water, making the crests of the waves shine like thin blades. At midday the heat gathered on deck and warmed wood and rigging. In the evening the sun sank slowly, dyeing the sky in colors too beautiful for what they accompanied. And at night came the darkness that swallowed everything, except what did not belong there.

The crew worked. Not badly. Not outstandingly. But enough.

Kral kept watching them, kept paying attention to the small things, to how they moved together, to how orders were passed on, how quickly someone reacted when something was wrong. And he intervened when it was needed, not loudly, not as a display, but precisely, so no uncertainty could take root.

They kept calling at ports, taking on provisions, taking payment, letting themselves be feared, and the stories of the sea monster grew denser with every mile, as if they clung to them like salt on skin. Kral began to notice he was not only earning from those rumors, the rumors were doing something else too. They were changing the men, making them more vigilant and also more nervous, as if the unseen were slowly taking shape.

Out at sea they found more. Not only isolated pieces, but traces.

Half a hull drifting like a broken spine through the water, planks not simply snapped apart but forced outward, as if something from inside had tried to break free. Crates with splintered lids. Barrels still sealed, and when they opened them the smell of wine rose and mixed with salt.

They hauled everything aboard. Greedily. And yet there was a gap that stayed a gap. They found no people, no living survivors, no castaways, no corpses. The sea gave back material, but no humans.

The singing grew stronger. Not louder, but clearer.

It was no longer possible to ignore it, and even the men who had kept quiet before began to look at one another when it came, began to reassure themselves they were not hearing it alone, that it was not a trick of their own minds.

High voices, almost like singing without language. Deep voices beneath, slower, carried. And sometimes, very rarely, there was something between them that did not fit, a break, a tone that did not belong, as if someone or something were trying to speak into it.

The удар from below made the ship shudder, but it did not stop at one blow. A second followed at once, then a third, not at the same place, but offset, as if something beneath them were circling, testing them, brushing along the hull and striking at different points.

Kral was below before the men understood what was happening. This was no reef, he knew these waters. Water was coming in. Not as one stream, but in several. Small leaks at first, then larger ones, as if the first cracks had widened under pressure.

“Faster,” he said only, and the men worked, melted pitch, pressed it into the cracks, held it with cloth, with wood, with anything that could serve, while others bailed the water out, bucket by bucket, until their rhythm could do nothing else.

When Kral came back on deck, he saw it moving in the distance under the surface. The creature was coming closer again, and it was bigger than he had grasped at first.

The body pulled through the water, long, supple, but not even, with bulges, with beginnings of limbs, with something that moved without you being able to say where. When it turned, something broke the surface that looked like a horn, curved, dark, wetly shining, before it vanished again.

It did not come straight at them.

It came from below.

And every time it struck, it did it differently, as if it were learning, as if it were adapting. Kral drove the ship to speed, had oil poured behind them into the water and lit, so a burning stripe formed, a wall of fire across the surface. For a while the creature kept its distance, but it did not retreat, did not disappear. It stayed.

Night came. And with it the real hunt began.

They sailed in darkness without lights, guided only by feeling, by experience, by what Kral believed he still knew. Beneath them the creature kept moving, invisible and yet tangible in the way the water behaved, in small waves striking the hull without any wind. Again and again it came, again and again it found them.

A удар.

A crack.

A scream.

Then quiet.

The men worked without pause, sealing, bailing, securing, while exhaustion ate into their movements, while hands grew slower and thoughts shorter. On the second day the ship had already changed. It sat deeper. The wood was webbed with patches, dark pitch, makeshift reinforcements that held, but not forever, and everyone knew it even if no one said it.

They saw land.

More than once.

And each time they neared it, each time hope rose, the creature returned, drove them off, forced them back out, leaving no doubt that it would not allow escape. So Kral turned east, into the open sea.

And there the storm hit. Hard. The wind seized the sails, the ship was shoved sideways, water slammed over deck, men lost their footing, slid, got up again, kept working while the sky closed and every sense of direction vanished.

In that chaos the creature was not to be seen. They spent three days in the storm. They made distance.

The night after was the longest. No stars. No direction. Only water and singing. Again and again the singing. Far, then near, and at some point no one knew anymore whether it was really there or only in their heads.

In the morning they saw islands. Kral did not know them. And in that exact moment the attack came.

The ship was hit from the side, spun, the keel struck ground, first lightly, then with full force. Wood split, a crack ran through the hull, longer than all the ones before, and this time everyone on board knew it could no longer be held.

People were thrown overboard.

“Everyone down,” Kral shouted, and his voice was swallowed by the noise, the cracking, the screaming, but the men were already moving, grabbing what they could, jumping, pulling others with them, while water now did not seep in, it poured in.

One man slipped, was flung against the rail, vanished in the water, surfaced once more, grabbed at a rope someone threw him, was hauled in, half unconscious, coughing, alive.

Another stayed below deck too long. When they found him, the water was already over his head, and he had drowned in a cabin.

The ship broke.

Kral was one of the last to jump.

The water was cold. Heavy. Full of debris. Wood struck him, something brushed his leg, he went under, came up again, grabbed a plank, dragged himself along it until he felt solid ground under his feet. Behind him the ship was torn apart. The creature came once more, smashed what still stood, dragged remnants out.

And then the singing came.

Loud.

Clear.

And the creature reacted.

It froze.

Moved restlessly.

As if it were resisting.

As if it were being forced.

Then it turned away.

And vanished.

What remained was the beach. And the men. And suddenly Kral was no longer only the one who had led them, but the one they called to account.

XVI

Midwinter did not last only one night, and perhaps that was precisely the most dangerous thing about it, because what at first looked like a festival, like an exception, like a controlled loosening of boundaries, in truth spread over days, seven in all if you counted the time of fasting, seven days in which the school transformed itself and with it everyone who stayed within its walls. It began with renunciation, with the slow retreat of the ordinary, with less food, less sleep, less speech, with rooms where scented herbs were burned and wine was served only in small amounts, just enough to make the body more receptive and to loosen the mind from its accustomed joints. Then, when the final day came, when they ate again and the silence that had lain over the halls like taut strings was finally allowed to release, everything tipped into something else, into a sensory intoxication that was not merely of bodies, warmth, and wine, but of that particular depth only the School of the Mind seemed able to produce, because here it was never only about desire, but equally about openness, about shedding protection, about the brief suspension of what one normally had to be in order to survive.

For Anadar this time became something he had neither hoped for nor believed himself capable of. He healed. Not suddenly, not as if by miracle, but in that slow, deep way wounds heal that do not lie only in flesh. Exhaustion left him little by little, his thoughts grew clear again, the inner tension that had lodged in him for weeks, perhaps for months, lost its sharpness, and physically too he found his way back into a strength he had almost forgotten, because for so long he had moved only from one next goal to the next without truly noticing what the path was costing him. He enjoyed these days more than he would have admitted aloud, precisely because he knew they would not last. Again and again he thought of the North, of Slonda, of what awaited him there, of the necessity of finally traveling on and seeking answers, and each time those thoughts threatened to take hold, each time they took shape and tried to pull him out of the present warmth back into duty and restlessness, the Mother was there, not always visible, not always with words, but with that sure, quiet power that guided his mind to a different place, as if she knew very precisely that he was not allowed back into the world yet, that he had to be held a little longer in this in between space so that what had broken would not merely be patched, but truly closed.

And Shara was different now as well. Anadar did not understand everything about what had happened between her and the Mother, not the path, not the method, not the depth of what might have been transferred there, but he understood enough to know it had been a gift, not only to her but to all of them, and that Shara now moved through Zoordak with a calm, a clarity, and a silent sharpness he had not known in her before. She had not become less herself, not that, but something had been added to her that did not make her harder, but deeper, as if she had suddenly gained access to a layer where others still fumbled, and often he watched her in conversation, the way she moved, the way she was silent, the way she looked at him or at the others, and he understood then with a mixture of awe and cautious gratitude that she now perceived things that only recently had remained hidden even from him. What the Mother had given her was power, certainly, but not that raw, obvious form of power you recognize at once and fear, rather something more dangerous and at the same time finer, a knowledge of structures, of thoughts, of the unspoken, and perhaps that was precisely why the bond between them all had felt so self evident in these days, as if they had not tied it anew but only finally noticed it.

Morgut, Miene, and Siendra became almost inseparable during this time. The last weeks had already welded them closely together, yet now it seemed that out of companionship something like a small unit of their own was gradually forming, one that functioned without many words, where each seemed able to anticipate the movements of the others, and Anadar and Shara watched it with quiet amusement, above all because neither of them missed that Miene and Siendra, in very different ways, had taken an interest in Morgut, each trying not to make it too obvious, and yet both so visible in their small attentions, their glances, and their respective ways of making themselves useful that the whole thing was almost touching. Morgut for his part seemed to grasp only half of it, was friendly, open, and possessed of that enviable innocence people sometimes retain precisely when the world around them has long since begun to complicate, and so everyone stayed silent about what might or might not have happened among them during Midwinter, just as they stayed silent about what had lain between the Mother, Shara, and Anadar under the shelter of those days. What happened during the Midwinter celebration stayed there, bound to those rooms, to that school, to that time. It was not named, not explained, not dragged into the cool language of everyday life, and perhaps there lay a form of dignity precisely in that.

Then the festival ended, and with it reality returned, first hesitantly, then clearly, like a cold you feel at first only on your hands and soon again in your whole body. Three days remained until the conclave, and from the soft time of intoxication planning returned. They sat together in a small chamber, bent over maps, parchments, notes, and old road layouts spread before them, while outside Zoordak was already busy loosening itself from Midwinter and resuming that ordered beauty which so often concealed how much power and will lay within its walls. Anadar had firmly resolved to go through the portal from the School of the Mind and then continue on, no longer to wait, no longer to postpone. The direct way north, the one Nigk and Xian had taken, was in all likelihood impassable for months, buried, iced over, or simply too dangerous because of winter conditions, so for now only the detour remained: first to Tandor, to Slonda, who perhaps had learned more than one could have known last, and from there possibly further via Flund to Sontor, a route that was not impossible, but unpleasant enough that one took it only if it was truly necessary.

Traveling over the Great Market and the good roads, Anadar rejected inwardly from the outset. Too open. Too visible. Too easy to anticipate. He would have preferred anyway to ride alone, faster, less bound, with less responsibility for others and with that bitter convenience that lies in endangering only oneself. But he did not even speak it aloud, because he already knew how Shara would react, and because he also knew her objection would not only be vehement but entirely justified. In that respect it was easier to leave the thought where it belonged, among those possibilities that seem reasonable precisely because one hopes no one will have to point out their foolishness.

So they had a rough plan, nothing more, but still enough not to take the next step entirely blind. Then the Mother had Anadar summoned to her once more.

He went to her alone, through those bright, quiet corridors where even footsteps sounded muted, as if the walls wanted to prevent anything coarse from disturbing their peace, and when he entered her rooms he found her at first exactly as he would have expected: the young blond beauty, golden hair, golden light, on her divan in the round, bright room whose dome stretched like a private sky above her. She sat in that relaxed posture that never looked decorative on her, always like the expression of something self evident, and yet in the moment he looked at her everything changed.

The bright domed room was gone.

Not erased, not torn away, but replaced, and in its place they were in a square chamber of gray stone, more sober, narrower, older, with a fireplace where a fire burned, with windows high up in the wall through which cold daylight fell and offered a view of a dark forest. Before him now sat no longer the timeless figure Zoordak knew, but an infinitely old woman, thin, almost reduced to essentials, her face marked by folds, her skin like paper over bone, her white garment plain, almost poor, and yet in these features he recognized the Mother at once, not as a contradiction but as a truth that had been hidden beneath beauty. She smiled at him, and in that smile there was nothing weak, nothing broken. It was only old.

She gestured to a chair.

Anadar sat.

She sighed softly, poured tea, and set the cup before him with a slowness that did not seem labored but deliberate. Then they were silent for a long time. The fire cracked. Outside, branches moved in the wind. And Anadar realized this was no illusion, no influence, no teaching image, at least not in the simple way he could name. It felt real, and yet he did not dare to trust that impression fully.

When she finally spoke, she still had the Mother’s voice.

“What I now reveal and tell you will remain a secret between us,” she said, and the very plainness with which she spoke it made the weight of the words immediately tangible. “You will need this knowledge.”

She sighed again, as if a tiredness lay in what was coming that did not belong to this day, and Anadar only nodded, unable to reply, because he felt any hasty question would be too small.

“Many things have been set in motion,” she said then. “What was hidden is emerging again. An infinitely long time ago, long before some stars in the sky were born, long before that time, my son, the world was different.”

Anadar listened.

“I do not know how it was,” she continued. “Not truly. Not even I do. But I know it was different, and I know there was an event that changed everything. After that the conclave ruled, and it bound or destroyed everything that did not want to submit. Inquisition after inquisition, sometimes justified, sometimes not, but always brutal, always hunting what we would now call free magic. These boundaries are fluid, as you know. It was always about preventing the pursuit of power and dominion, and yet the conclave itself is nothing other than an institution of power. That is the absurdity it suffers from to this day.”

Anadar lifted his gaze. “So you are saying the balance the conclave claims to be is wavering.”

“Yes,” she said calmly. “That is how I read the signs. But it is not only what existed before the conclave that is re emerging now. It is also what happened after it. We were not always only six schools. There were more. Some dissolved. Some were absorbed into others. Others were wiped out.”

“How many disciplines were there?”

A tired smile passed across her old face. “I cannot answer that to your satisfaction. I am old, Anadar, but not that old. I did not live through the last great inquisition myself, and when I took this office I was too young to gain access to that knowledge that remained hidden even here. It is one of the things you, or your brother, must learn. The knowledge exists in this world, I do not doubt that, but it is well concealed, well hidden, so it cannot be found so easily. And there is a reason for that. It is dangerous.”

Anadar thought for a moment. “So the conclave. The codex. Before that it was hidden.”

“And before you,” she said, “and before me. Listen carefully. We are what we are, but our abilities do not define us. Our actions do. A weapon remains an object. An axe can bring wood, it can defend, it can kill. What it is is not decided by the iron, but by the hand that wields it, and the decision with which it is wielded.”

“I begin to understand,” Anadar said slowly.

“And yet,” she replied, “opinions can change, stances can tip, people can betray themselves. An axe remains an axe, but the bearer can become different, and that is what they fear. They fear you. Not because you have already done what they could accuse you of, but because you could. Because your nature, your power, and the path you move on lead to a boundary they must not be allowed to know you have reached at all. Never. Do you understand me? You are one of the things that will shift the balance.”

Anadar fell silent briefly, then said honestly, “Until now I was not aware of it.”

“There is more,” she said, and she tilted her head slightly, as if listening into something behind his words. “Books do not appear by chance and do not end up in the hands of untalented mages by chance. People do not flee because of a mere whim of weather. Demons do not simply appear because they should. Anadar, we will need you to hold a balance, or to find it again. Until then they will hunt you, if not the conclave itself, then individuals who believe they understand better than the others. They do not understand what they see, and that is precisely what makes them dangerous.”

Anadar smiled, a narrow, almost weary smile. “Then let them.”

She did not return it. “I do not think the North is the main problem. I think it is only a symptom, one of several, a sign of the times, just as the demon in your sword is one. If you want answers, start there.”

He frowned. “I do not quite understand.”

“It is a being,” she said, “from which you can learn something that scarcely exists in this world anymore, because it has been exterminated, almost entirely. It is ancient, cunning, and it wants something.”

“Blood.”

For the first time she smiled openly, almost tiredly. “No. Or not primarily. Yes, it thirsts, and yes, it will use that thirst against you, but that is not its true goal. I think it wants freedom. And knowledge. Be careful what you do. It watches you. It learns from you. It spies on you. And you can learn from it, if you are clever enough to recognize the narrow ridge you must walk on. In the end it may be the demon itself that can tell you how to bind it. Either that, or the book Fantor possessed. Do you know where it is?”

Anadar slowly shook his head. “I did not ask. I will have to find out. Can it read my thoughts? It influences me.”

“Not everything,” she said. “You can shield yourself. And you will have help. Shara will support you and shield you when necessary. Morgut, Miene, and Siendra should accompany you as well. They can protect Shara. Or you. You have an inner battle ahead of you, and I fear it will be harder than the outer one ever was.”

Anadar shivered involuntarily, because the word alone was enough to summon the memory of blood lust in him again, that ugly, dragging craving that did not come from him and yet felt as if it had always been there. “Is there anything that can lessen it?” he asked softly. “It is the demon that presses it on me. Sometimes I can resist.”

“It speaks to the primal instincts,” she answered. “Hunger. Addiction. The raw desire for relief. It sits in your subconscious and will strike exactly where you are most vulnerable. It will be a hard exercise for you to detach from it. It will turn the blood thirst against you, it will use your morality against you, your pride, your guilt, everything you take for strength. If you give in, it will become easier for it to get blood, and easier for you not to feel the pressure anymore. And in that lies the danger.”

She looked at him for a long time, very long, and in that gaze there was nothing motherly now, only an unrelenting clarity that was almost cruel because it refused all comfort.

“If you give in,” she said at last, very calmly, “you will always have had the choice. Understand that. Always.”

Anadar met her gaze. He wanted to speak, but she raised her hand, and her voice grew quieter.

“What is a human life, after all,” she asked, and although the words were spoken gently, they hit him like a cold cut. “You have the power of choice.”

Formularbeginn

Formularende

XVII

Slonda felt disturbed.

Not in that small, everyday way you feel disturbed by a step that is too loud in the corridor, a book put back on the wrong shelf, or a student asking the same question for the third time, but more fundamentally, down into the structure of his days, because since Grot had appeared in Tandor with his two companions, it was as if someone had decided to smear the few quiet lines Slonda’s life normally followed and leave coarse fingerprints everywhere.

In truth it was not even the two women who irritated him. Son and Indra stayed in the background almost the entire time, attentive, silent, awake like animals that had learned not to waste their effort. They stood or sat close to Grot, spoke little, moved without unnecessary motion, and yet never seemed idle. It was Grot himself who ruined everything. That heavy, domineering manner with which he entered rooms as if they already belonged to him, even before he had stepped inside. That unpleasant directness that knew nothing of tact, nothing of polite circumlocution, nothing of that fine form of asking that the academic world at least maintains until it becomes clear it is pointless. Grot seemed to understand every sentence as a shove, and every conversation as something you do not conduct but win.

On his very first day he had gone at Tranda and Isidre in a way that immediately turned Slonda against him. Tranda had still tried to treat him with that patient, mild tone older people adopt toward coarse visitors because they know open outrage only creates more noise. Isidre, on the other hand, had not even bothered to hide her contempt particularly well. Neither had helped. Grot had caught them in the corridor between shelves full of chronicles and registers, had barely greeted them and had gone straight to the point.

“I don’t believe your Master Slonda,” he had said, in that tone that turned a simple statement into an insult. “And I don’t have time for your sneaking about. Where is his damned brother.”

Tranda had blinked as if he first had to confirm he had understood the phrasing correctly.

“You speak of Anadar, I assume,” he had replied with remarkable calm. “If Master Slonda knew where his brother is at this moment, that would be information he would hardly need to hide from you, especially not so shortly before the conclave. Master Anadar is certainly not hiding from someone like you, he does not need to, does he.” The barb landed.

“He knows,” Grot had cut back. “He just won’t say it.”

Isidre had then folded her arms and regarded him with a coolness that might have been almost beautiful if the object of her gaze had not happened to be Grot.

“So you are accusing him of lies, intent, and conspiracy in one breath,” she had said. “It does save time, at least.”

Grot had not even smiled.

“Yes,” he had answered simply.

It was that manner Slonda could not endure. Not only the rudeness, unpleasant enough as it was, but the fundamental refusal to see the world as something complex. For Grot everything seemed to be either obstacle or tool, and the moment he met someone he did not immediately recognize as useful he treated them like a stone in the road.

Slonda would have liked to ignore him, but that became increasingly difficult. There were only a few days left until the conclave, and while the upper levels already radiated that nervous preparation that always precedes such a gathering, more coming and going, more messengers, more parcels, more voices in the corridors, Slonda himself had entirely different worries. He felt almost cheated, as if time had chosen precisely now not only to become tighter, but also to fill itself with a Grot.

Because he wanted to work.

No, more than that, he had to work.

The parchment he had deciphered gave him no peace. Since that night when the signs had finally opened to him and had suddenly turned from incomprehensibility into instruction, he carried that feverish certainty that down there, in the corridors of the lower library, something was possible that would call every conventional idea of path, place, and time into question. He had errands to run, to prepare torches, to find a mirror, to build a device that at first glance looked like a strange mixture of workbench, frame, and trap, and to do all of it in such a way that no one understood what he was working on. It was all in the parchment, not only the ritual itself, but even the odd, almost pedantic notes on material and execution, as if the writer had foreseen that the difficult part would not be the great magic, but the absurdly concrete preparation.

And now Grot followed him everywhere.

Not openly like a pursuer assigned to arrest someone, but worse, like a man who had decided to keep someone in sight and saw no problem in making that an open imposition. If Slonda went into a side room, Grot sooner or later appeared at the entrance. If he took the lower corridors, he found at least one of the two women at a stairwell or archway when he returned. If he stayed in the catalog rooms, Grot eventually stood there, hands clasped behind his back, looking around with that contemptuous disinterest that at the same time made it clear he noticed everything.

It became a cat and mouse game, only Slonda was not at all sure whether in this metaphor he was the mouse or the cleverer cat.

At first he tried to park Grot with Dean Tranda. He led him with selected politeness through three corridors, two staircases, and a small inner courtyard, explaining along the way with demonstrative thoroughness things no normal person would ever have wanted to know, such as why the lower indexes were not ordered by authors but by the age of the material, and why a particular cedar cabinet was more effective against moisture than any cheap preservation formula, and finally delivered him to the dean in a tone that barely concealed how much he hoped this visit would now adhere somewhere else.

“Master Grot has so many questions,” Slonda had said mildly. “And you can surely answer them far better than I can.”

Then he vanished.

Immediately.

Not hastily, because haste would have created suspicion, but quickly enough to use the moment gained, and he began at once to play the confused, slightly scattered scholar, as if nothing were more natural than that he should now of all times be looking for Drinda, one of those ungrateful young students you either saw three times a day or not at all for days, without it immediately having to be a catastrophe.

He asked everyone.

In case of emergency credible, in truth mainly for tactical reasons.

“Have you seen Drinda,” he asked a scribe who was sorting ink pots.

“Drinda. No, Master.”

“Are you sure. Tall enough to be in the way, and with exactly the sort of face that makes you involuntarily think of unfinished homework.”

She smiled awkwardly and shook her head.

He asked a novice in the stairwell, two archive assistants, even Isidre, who looked at him with one eyebrow raised and understood at once that something was being played here.

“Drinda. No. But if you are looking for him, then you are looking for him for a reason.”

“For several,” Slonda said dryly. “Among other things because he would be extremely convenient right now.”

He even asked Grot himself when they met unexpectedly in front of a shelf of maps.

“Have you happened to see Drinda,” Slonda asked brusquely, almost reproachfully. “The boy is so unreliable that I am almost tempted to consider him more useful when he is missing than when he is present.”

Grot looked at him as if this were the most thankless diversion he had ever encountered.

“No,” he said. “And I am not looking for your student. I am looking for your brother.”

“Then at least you search more purposefully than I do,” Slonda replied. “That comforts me.”

Yet for all the acting he did in fact wonder that Drinda could not be found. It did not quite fit the boy to make himself completely invisible precisely now, shortly before the conclave. Slonda noted the fact somewhere at the edge of his mind without giving it the place it might have deserved, and instead continued to use it as decorative confusion in his small theater.

Meanwhile he began to use old passageways that from the outside looked like secret doors but in truth had nothing romantic about them, because they had once merely been practical connectors: narrow corridors behind the shelves, hidden runs inside walls, maintenance passages for lamps and drafts, stone staircases that in earlier times had served to move book carts past bottlenecks or to drain water from lower rooms. Most people in the library no longer knew them or believed them walled up, and precisely for that reason they were useful. Slonda slipped through them not like a conspirator but like a man who has lived with a building for years and gradually learned its bad habits.

Once he addressed Grot directly.

Not in anger, rather in a tired frankness that perhaps appeared even more dangerous.

“It bothers me,” he said when they met in the lowest antechamber where the stone stayed damp even in summer. “I am saying this plainly now, because your school clearly cannot do anything with hints. It bothers me that you follow me step for step. It bothers me that you obstruct my work, steal my time, and stand in rooms to which you have no inner connection. In short, you are insufferable.”

Grot did not even blink.

“Good,” he said. “Then at least you understand how I feel as long as you lie to me.”

Slonda looked at him for a long moment.

“I am not lying to you,” he said at last. “I am merely not informing you in the order you would find pleasant.”

That did not impress Grot in the slightest.

So Slonda changed tactics. He realized that while Grot was persistent, he was not patient. There was a difference many did not understand. Persistence meant being able to do something for a long time. Patience meant enduring boredom without losing sight of the point. Grot possessed the first, but hardly the second. So Slonda sat down in places that were unpleasant for reasonable people. In a drafty side room of the catacombs where fine drops constantly fell from the ceiling and the stone held the cold so well your fingers went stiff after an hour. There he spread out old texts, pulled up a stool, sat down, and read.

Or at least pretended to.

Grot did indeed come down with him, stood in the entrance, folded his arms, watched for a while, and apparently waited for Slonda to lose patience at some point.

He did not.

He turned pages. Wrote margin notes. Compared two fragments of text he already knew. Rubbed his forehead once as if a particularly phrased line had offended him. Then read on.

After what felt like an eternity, Grot left.

Exactly what Slonda had expected.

As soon as the footsteps had faded, Slonda began to work on his preparations. There were still two days until the conclave, and with every hour his feverish excitement grew. By now he had almost everything together. The mirror, which he had found in a scarcely used inventory list under “polished backs, teaching purposes, damaged” and obtained against the quiet disapproval of a quartermaster. The mounting, which he had built himself, a strange construction of wood, wire, two tension arms, and a small hammer that could be triggered by a simple but effective spring mechanism. The seaweed, which had truly been difficult to procure because at this time of year it was hardly to be found, and he had already thought he would fail on it until he had come across a small, unattractive delivery at the apothecary’s whose origin even the apothecary could not explain precisely. Perhaps from the south, perhaps by detours, perhaps simply luck. Slonda did not ask further. He took it as a sign, and if it was not one, then at least as a usable coincidence.

At last everything was installed below, in that corridor that had appeared in his dreams for nights now, always the same, always with the same peculiar perspective, as if the place were not simply part of the library, but a point where something in the world became thinner. There he set up the mirror, aligned the device before it, checked angles, measured distances, drew chalk marks on stone and wiped them away again because they were not exact enough, and when he was finally done he was so tense his hands trembled slightly.

Now he only had to get rid of Grot.

So the game began again. Once more he sat in the darkest, dampest, draftiest part of the catacombs, once more he opened texts, once more he sank into the most insufferable kind of scholarship a person could credibly present. Grot followed him down again, but this time did not stay a quarter of an hour. Perhaps five minutes. Perhaps less. Then he turned away, as if even his suspicion had limits, and went back up.

Slonda waited one more breath, then two, listened until the steps were truly gone, and stood.

He went down the corridor quickly now, but not running, because running in the library was, even in moments like these, a kind of sacrilege he could not allow himself. The room, if one could call it that, lay silent before him, narrow, of old stone, with walls on either side that had once been patched centuries ago. He lit the prepared torches. The seaweed did what the parchment had promised. The flames did not burn yellow but blue, bright and sharp, and cast a cold light on the walls that made the painted runes stand out unnaturally clearly. Slonda placed the mirror in the center, adjusted the device one last time before it, cocked the small spring, made sure the hammer would indeed snap forward with enough force as soon as the trigger fell, and then began to set the signs definitively, on the floor, on the wall, on the back of the mirror, every line as precise as his hand could guide it.

Then he gathered himself.

This was not the kind of ritual that began with grand gestures. Rather with collection, with concentration on structure, on sequence, on inner measure. He spoke the first words softly, almost without voice, more into the room than into the air, and at first nothing happened, then only the slightest trembling in the mirror glass, as if there were movement behind it that could not come from there. The wavering began, first weak, then stronger, until the surface no longer behaved like glass but like something liquid that only pretended to have form. The rumble grew with it, a deep, pressing sound, as if somewhere behind the walls something were being opened that had long been closed. The blue torches burned brighter, almost white at their tips, and for a moment the runes on wall and floor seemed not merely painted, but written into the stone itself.

The mirror opened.

Slonda stepped through.

Not hesitant.

Not heroic.

Rather with that sober resolve a scholar sometimes develops when he finally reaches the point where theory can only be tested by action.

At the same instant the device triggered. The small hammer snapped forward, struck the glass, and the glass, which in that moment was no longer glass at all, shattered with a bright, sharp sound that shot through the corridor and was then immediately swallowed.

When Grot returned to the basement only moments later, he was at first merely irritated. He had not found what he was looking for up above, not at the tables, not in the antechambers, not in the side rooms, and the idea that this evasive earth mage had once again led him by the nose made his steps faster and his gaze harder. He hoped Slonda would still be at his place. He came into the lower area, saw the deserted writing station, the notes lying open, but no Slonda.

“Damn it.”

Nothing.

No one.

“That mage,” he muttered with rising anger. “He played me.”

He went farther into the corridor without at first understanding what he was seeing. Why was there junk everywhere. Remains of torches. Chalk dust. A toppled piece of wood. A few wires. He pushed something aside with his boot, heard a dry scrape, and stepped farther, over shards that glinted dully in the blue leftover light.

He stopped.

Looked around.

Nothing and no one was here.

Only the insufferably clear certainty that Slonda must have been here just moments ago and now was no longer here.

Grot cursed softly, turned, and went back up to search for the damned brother, and how he hated him, both of them.

XVIII

On the day of the conclave, even in Zoordak there was something of that fine unrest you do not hear, and precisely for that reason it feels stronger than open noise. The halls of the School of the Mind lay, as always, bright and ordered; the water in the narrow basins was clear; the attendants moved with the same calm certainty as on the days before. And yet in all of it there was a barely perceptible extra degree of attention, a special exactness in glances, steps, and gestures, as if the school had decided that for this one evening it would not simply be a hostess, but would itself become conscious of the fact that beneath its dome something might be decided whose consequences would reach far beyond these walls.

For Anadar the day passed faster than he liked. Perhaps it was because he still had not fully stepped out of the warmth of the previous days, out of that peculiar in between time after Midwinter in which everything had become lighter and deeper at once. Perhaps it was also because his thoughts kept drifting in the same direction and getting caught where they found nothing. Slonda. An intuition seized him. He is missing. At first it was no more than a deviation, then a thought, then a small disturbance in the order of his inner picture, but the closer the evening came, the more weight that disturbance acquired. He did not dare to make it big. Not yet. He still wanted to tell himself that his brother could very well be somewhere in Tandor’s lower halls, hunched over a roll as so often, rude to time and occasion, but safe. Only it was hard to say that with real conviction. Something had happened to his brother.

When evening finally came and the bell called to the conclave, the great hall filled with that heaviness formal gatherings have when everyone present knows very well that form is, in truth, only the garment of power. The room itself was high and round, lit by lamps in golden wall niches whose light lay on pale stone and made the long table in the middle look like an island of wood and order. Above everything stretched the dome with the delicate paintings of the six schools: water, fire, wind, mind, earth, and life, not equally large but arranged in a circle all the same, expressing the old claim that all were necessary to one another and none might rise above the other. That this arrangement alone, each time anew, offered silent and less silent occasions for vanity was one of the many small ironies that made a conclave bearable at all.

The Mother entered first, accompanied by Sina, whose face was so smooth and calm that even nervousness seemed unable to take hold there for long. Shortly after, Oni came in with Anadar in tow, which amused him inwardly in a way he did not let show, because no one who did not know Oni well would ever have imagined she dragged anyone anywhere. In truth it was rather her way of walking through a room that bound everything and everyone to her own movement. Anadar disengaged at the right moment and went to his place with that controlled calm that had returned to him in the last days, not out of indifference but out of discipline.

Then Manador entered, and with him Loon and Vaslat.

In the very instant the three crossed the threshold it was clear the evening would not begin without friction. Vaslat should not have been there, at least not according to that silent agreement by which each school appeared in its usual composition and everything beyond that immediately smelled of a hunger for standing. Anadar looked at the young fire mage only briefly and already knew what would follow. Vaslat looked groomed, groomed in that careful way that mistakes itself for dignity, and his face carried an expression of loyal determination that was as groomed as his clothes. Before he had even reached his seat, discontent was already sitting in the room.

Hokn’f entered almost at the same time with Roto and Kolnidranooora, and his face already held everything his tongue would speak a few breaths later. Fontal followed with Sil and Onina, slower, smoother, more courteous in posture, but in no way less determined.

“Is this a conclave today,” Hokn’f asked loudly, before everyone was even seated, “or the ceremonial entrance of a school that has decided to raise itself above the others.”

Manador lifted only an eyebrow.

“If you speak more plainly, Hokn’f, perhaps you spare us the detour through the pose.”

“Gladly,” the wind master shot back. “Does the Fiery Fortress now send four instead of three because it considers its number law, or shall Master Anadar already be introduced here as the highest master of the conclave so that at least we know for the rest of the evening under whose shadow we are sitting.”

Fontal steepled her fingertips and said with that smooth calm that sometimes suited her more dangerously than open anger: “It would simply be helpful to name things. A school that brings four voices into the hall while others adhere to form and measure thereby sets a sign. Not every sign is wise.”

Tranda, who was already seated, tried to mediate in his old, wise manner, like someone who had spent too many evenings with too much pride at too one table to be impressed by the first spark.

“Perhaps,” he said mildly, “the whole thing has a simpler explanation than the one you give it. Perhaps Vaslat is here not as an additional voice, but as an attendant, and we might at least spare ourselves the outrage until we know what exactly we are outraged about.”

“Oh, how reassuring,” Hokn’f said sharply. “So it is only about the gesture.”

“Which, with the Fire School,” Fontal murmured, “is not exactly less… unpleasant.”

Tranda’s attempt to lower the tone failed on the simple fact that he was dealing with men who did not want to settle today, but wanted to attack. Manador fell silent, but in that silence there was already enough contempt to keep stoking the matter. Loon watched the scene with a narrow gaze, as if she were already calculating inwardly how far this evening might still spiral. Vaslat, meanwhile, seemed for a moment to genuinely believe he could balance the entire situation by his mere presence, until he understood that his presence was precisely the problem.

Then he stood.

It happened quickly enough that several heads lifted at once. He planted both hands on the tabletop, leaned forward, and struck the wood with his fist, not so hard that anything broke, but hard enough that the blow ran once through the hall and for a moment real quiet existed.

“Master Anadar,” he hissed, and his voice did not tremble with fear, but with a loyalty that at the wrong moment easily tips into fanaticism, “stands above this pettiness. He does not strive for power. He needs neither your seats, nor your small victories, nor your votes least of all. If an imbalance arises, it is not through him, but through the thought that you could measure him by your standards. I will leave the hall now so your balance may be restored. But hear this once clearly at least. We are loyal to Master Anadar.” He bowed to him. Anadar did not know whether this improved the situation.

With that he straightened, looked at no one, turned, and left.

The door fell shut behind him, and for a few breaths it stayed silent.

“Touching,” Fontal said at last.

“Childish,” Hokn’f said.

“Mmh,” Manador murmured.

Anadar only smiled fleetingly and lowered his gaze, because the whole scene seemed as unpleasant as it was embarrassing. He would have liked to call Vaslat back while he was still walking and scold him for his painfully honest display, but it was too late, and in truth the damage was already smaller than it might have become without Vaslat’s exit. Three voices instead of four were, at least, easier to bear.

Then the conclave began with all its usual forms.

The lights were lowered and raised again. The names of the schools were spoken in the fixed order. Before each delegation was placed the corresponding bowl: water for the Water School, glowing coals for the Fire School, a fine jar filled with sand for the Earth School, fragrant herbs for the School of Life, a ring of thin silver leaves that responded even to breath for the Wind School, and finally a dark, mirrorlike bowl for the School of the Mind, in whose surface nothing could be seen except what one did not wish to see. Each held a hand above the sign of their school; each spoke the old sentences—some with conviction, some from habit, some as if they held the words for outdated and precisely therefore necessary.

Anadar went through the formalism without despising it, but also without granting it that inner seriousness some saw in it. Instead he noticed something else. The seat beside Tranda remained empty. Slonda’s chair stood there, empty in its plainness, untouched, and precisely because no one said anything about it, the absence became more palpable. He also noticed, with unease, that Grot had entered the hall on the side of the Earth School before taking his own place with the Water School, as if he already half carried Slonda’s absence with him and at the same time wanted to make clear that this closeness neither belonged to him nor displeased him. Anadar could not stand the man. Never had. Too slick in his coarseness, too unpleasantly direct, too eager to sort every movement of the world into command and resistance. But he remained silent. He did not ask after his brother. Not yet. Questions would have given the circumstance a size that might still prove unnecessary. Or prove far too necessary.

Only when the last ritual word had been spoken, the last hand withdrawn, and the last cup set at the edge of the table did the actual conclave begin.

As expected it was Hokn’f and Fontal who made the first thrust.

“Then we come to the matter,” Hokn’f said, leaning forward. “The events of the recent time, the reports from the north, the incidents connected with the Fiery Fortress and in particular with Master Anadar, demand an investigation. I move for an official review of the occurrences and a formal questioning of Master Anadar.”

“I support this,” Fontal said. “Not out of hostility. Out of necessity. We have reports of the demonic, of unclear bindings, of a blade that is obviously not merely steel, and we have a mage who has passed through six schools. Six. That alone is a fact that must raise questions in any serious conclave.”

Manador laughed shortly, without any mirth.

“Raise questions,” he repeated. “A very fine phrase. One could almost believe you have an interest in scholarship and not merely in suspicion.”

“Suspicion does not arise without cause,” Hokn’f replied. “Six schools are no longer cause, but evidence. That we tolerate such a thing at all is already remarkable.”

The Mother lifted her head slightly. Her voice was calm, and precisely in that lay its edge.

“Tolerate,” she said. “What a strange word in this context. As if insight were an offense that is only not punished because one cannot yet grasp the perpetrator in orderly fashion.”

Fontal returned her gaze with smooth courtesy. “This is not about insight, Mother. It is about power. You know that as well as we do.”

“Then speak honestly at least,” Manador said.

Tranda placed both hands on the table, as if to slow the others’ movements at the outset.

“There have been precedents,” he said. “Few, but there have been. Mages who reached—or nearly reached—six circles. Not many. Not without dispute. But the world did not immediately break because of it.”

“And it did not immediately blossom either,” Hokn’f shot back.

“No one claimed it did,” Tranda said with a sigh. “I only say that an exception is no proof. A questioning, however, is not necessarily harmful. Questions are, at first, only questions.”

Anadar smiled softly.

Fontal noticed at once.

“You seem amused, Master Anadar.”

“Not by you,” Anadar said evenly. “By time. We sit here and pretend it is a great deed to ask about something that either already lies open before you or cannot be grasped by your questions anyway.”

“So you have no objection to being questioned,” Hokn’f said quickly.

“I object to wasting time,” Anadar replied.

That earned him, on one side, a flash of irritation, and on the other, a barely perceptible amusement. The Mother lowered her lids for a moment as if to tell him that such sentences were oil, not water. Manador looked as though he had inwardly cursed him and praised him at the same time.

Fontal spoke again, cooler now.

“It is convenient to speak of wasting time when you yourself have become the subject of the question. You have passed through six schools. You carry a responsibility. Around you incidents accumulate whose pattern none of us can ignore. If you do not strive for power, Master Anadar, then you will surely be able to explain to us what you have instead devoted yourself to.”

Anadar lifted his gaze.

“To survival,” he said.

It was plain enough that even Hokn’f had nothing for it for a moment.

Then the discussion began—examples, old names, half remembered cases in which other mages had reached similar boundaries. Tranda brought a few, factual, careful, as if to make clear that knowledge need not be partisanship. Fontal referred to a case where a six circler had later been forced into isolation. Manador dismantled the comparison by saying that only when the man became senile did he become a problem. Hokn’f spoke of institutional risk. The Mother spoke of fear as a poor advisor. The Water School—Dean Sinadie or Grot—said nothing for a long time, which irritated Anadar almost more than a statement would have, because with men of that sort silence is rarely humility.

Eventually a vote was demanded.

“Then we vote,” Hokn’f said. “On the further procedure. On an official investigation and the questioning of Master Anadar.”

“Before any vote,” the Mother said calmly, “there will be a position stated.”

That was form. And form, if she wished it, was still power.

She was asked first. She did not speak long. She spoke clearly: that she considered the demand premature; that in times of real movement no council is well advised to expend its energy on those who still stand at its side; that Anadar was not a man who grasped for offices; and that she considered the fear of his possibility the problem rather than his reality.

Manador spoke after her and did so in his way—sharper, more direct, with less patience.

“If any one of you believes Anadar sits here licking his lips for your chairs, then you overestimate yourselves to a degree that would almost be admirable. I am against this vote, against this demand, and against the unpleasantly cheap hope that one can bind something with an interrogation that one cannot even name.”

Then Tranda.

He looked at the empty seat beside him, only briefly, but Anadar noticed.

“The Earth School,” Tranda said slowly, “abstains.”

Hokn’f slapped his palm on the table. “What does that mean, you abstain.”

“It means,” Tranda said with patience that was almost insulting, “that we abstain. Master Slonda is absent. That is no small circumstance. We do not vote on this matter without him. Neutrality is, in this moment, the most honest expression of what we can represent.”

Triumph was already echoing through the room.

All eyes went to Sinadie.

She sat in her stiffness and looked almost annoyed, as though she now had to say something she herself disliked.

“The Water School,” she said at last, “abstains as well.”

It was as if someone had torn an expected line out of the picture.

Hokn’f looked at her, incredulous. Fontal tightened her mouth, not quite a grimace, but close. On one side of the table there was for a moment disbelief, on the other merely that sober realization that things were not going the way one had already arranged them in one’s head.

Hokn’f lifted his fist in triumph, more from habit than mathematics, and then Manador said with biting calm:

“Then it is two to two.”

The wind master let his hand fall.

“A tie,” Fontal said softly, as though she first had to taste the word to convince herself of its reality.

“That is how unpleasantly simple arithmetic can be,” Manador murmured.

And for the moment the matter was over.

There was more speaking, of course, because a conclave that simply breaks up with a tie would not be worthy of its own vanity, but the core had been decided. No investigation, no official questioning, no triumph—at best irritation on several sides at once. Anadar remained quiet to the end, answered only when form required it, and finally left as he had come: without haste, without gesture, inwardly already elsewhere. The coming morning already had shape. The departure as well. And above it all stood the same question he had not asked and yet could not shake.

Where was his brother. Tandor and Idra could not tell him; he had been missing since yesterday. They did not believe Grot had anything to do with it. He had seemed just as surprised and outraged as they were.

The next morning he was with the Mother again.

Shara was with him. The Mother herself was the young woman he knew—golden, clear, beautiful in that quiet way that was never ornament on her, always a state. The light in the room was soft, it fell through high windows and laid itself over the round domed hall, over the pale cushions, the low table, the thin bowls of tea and herbs. It was a peaceful room, and precisely because of that, what lay between them struck all the harder.

They spoke for a long time.

Not immediately about Slonda. First about the night, the vote, Grot, that unpleasant little pack of men who wanted to question Anadar in order to warm themselves with the feeling that someone could still judge him. Only gradually did the Mother lead the conversation to where it had belonged from the start.

“Something is going on with your brother,” she said at last, and it was not the phrasing that frightened Anadar but its plainness. “I cannot find him. Not in the way I usually find people. It is strange.”

Anadar was silent a long time before he answered.

“I feel something similar, an emptiness,” he said finally, and even as he spoke he could hear how much desire and conviction were still fighting for the same place. “He will be fine. He can take care of himself. I hope, at least. It would be entirely like him to find something in the library that no one should find. Or for something to find him.”

The Mother looked at him, and there was no soothing in her gaze.

“That is exactly what worries me.”

Shara had been silent until then. Now she leaned forward slightly and her voice was calm, clear, entirely her own.

“Then we ride.”

It was not a dramatic sentence, not even a particularly loud one. Precisely for that reason it landed like a decision, not an outcry. Anadar looked at her, and for a moment everything that had grown between them in the last days slid through the room, open and self evident. She would come. There was nothing to negotiate. Morgut, Miene, and Siendra anyway.

Anadar finally lifted his cup, set it down again, and said quietly, “Thank you for the time, Mother.”

A barely visible smile touched her face.

“My dear,” she said, “I wish you did not have to leave so soon. But you are right. Time presses. And some things do not wait until we feel prepared enough.”

Shara stepped to her, bent down, and kissed her once more. It was a different kiss than the first, less a threshold and more a confirmation, less a consecration and more a bond, and yet there was enough tenderness in it that Anadar averted his gaze for a moment, not out of embarrassment but because he felt some things become too real when you look at them too directly.

Outside, Morgut, Miene, and Siendra were already waiting by the horses.

The morning was cool. In the courtyards lay that clear breath of early light that makes every step feel a little sharper. The animals were saddled, provisions strapped down, blankets tied fast, and Morgut looked as though he had been longing for this hour, because standing still always tired him faster than motion. Miene checked the straps for the third time. Siendra spoke softly to one of the horses, as if persuasion with animals were more honest than with people.

Before Anadar reached the chest in which the sword lay, he paused once more. He did not turn fully back toward the Mother. It was not a spoken farewell, rather a reaching out of thought, careful, probing, and yet with enough clarity that he knew she would hear him.

You are not telling me everything, he sent.

The answer came at once, gentle and clear.

Everything in its time. Not every knowledge is suited to every person.

He might almost have smiled, if the sentence had not irritated him at the same time.

That is not an answer.

It is the only one you get right now.

He exhaled, turned to the chest, and placed his hand on the lid.

The moment he took the sword back to himself was like putting on a burden he had almost forgotten for a few days. The instant his hand closed around the hilt, the inner quiet was not gone but pierced through, and from the depth, raw, greedy, scarcely language at all, rose the voice:

BLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOODDDDDDDD.

Anadar closed his eyes for an instant.

Control yourself.

It was no spoken command, no sentence for the others. More a cut inward, a reminder of boundary, will, and form. When he lifted his lids again, the journey lay before him, open, cold, necessary, and somewhere in the north, or in something even more northern than a direction, waited his brother—or what remained of his path.

Anadar fastened the sword at his side, pulled his gloves tighter, and stepped to the horses.

“We ride,” he said.

And this time no one objected.

 END BOOK II